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Sunday, February 17, 2013

Compassion Sunday ~ Getting Started

This year's official Compassion Sunday date is April 21, 2013.

In case you aren't familiar with what Compassion Sunday is, let me tell you a bit. This is an annual, national campaign that is designed to spread the message of child sponsorship and recruit new sponsors.

As a sponsor or an advocate, YOU are invited to participate!

Compassion has fantastic resources for you and we'll get to those in a bit. But first I want to share some of my own advice from my experience over the years.

1. PRAY ~ Right now stop and pray about this opportunity.

Pray for God to open doors so that you can do a Compassion Sunday presentation this year.

Pray that God will begin to soften the hearts of those who will hear the presentation.

Pray for the kids who are waiting to be sponsored and who will have a chance at sponsorship through Compassion Sunday.

Pray that God will raise up new sponsors as a result of these presentations.

2. CHOOSE TO PARTICIPATE~ Make a decision to participate in some capacity this year.

3. GET PERMISSION~ Personally, I start with the leadership at my church. If your pastor does not know of your involvement in Compassion's ministry, share your story with him or her. Share how God has used sponsorship to grow your relationship with Him. I would share any or all of the following with my pastor:

How I became a sponsor.

What sponsorship means to me.

How sponsorship has helped me understand what it means to follow Christ.

Specific Bible verses that inspire me to give.

Why I want to share this opportunity with the church.

4. SET A DATE ~ although the official date is April 21st, choose the date that best works for your church. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO HOLD YOUR EVENT ON THE OFFICIAL DATE. Find out what works for your church and for you.

5. REGISTER YOUR EVENT~ Go to the Compassion Sunday website and register your event. This is an important step as this allows you to customize your order and plan your event.

We'll talk more about this throughout the week, but in the meantime, here's a short video you can watch.